Thus the end of September saw the Germans held in check. They had won Vilna and Grodno, but they had failed to cut off the troops in these salients, and had not made good the line of the Dvina. Winter was almost upon them, yet they had not found a suitable position for winter quarters. Meanwhile the Russians were growing in strength every day.
During the terrible months from May till September the nation had suffered greatly, and misfortune had been heaped on misfortune. The spectacle of troops falling back day by day, the endless stream of wounded arriving at the bases, the highroads thronged with homeless peasants, and the seeming hopeless struggle would have broken down the spirit of most nations and brought about revolution; but in Russia, though there was some unrest, there was no revolution. Even the peasants who had lost their all, and had not where to lay their heads, bore their sufferings without complaint. A correspondent who talked with some of them tells us they felt that they were playing their part in defeating the hated enemy, as their fathers had done before them. They hoped for an early winter in order that their enemy might perish of cold and starvation, and they thought nothing of the sufferings that the winter would bring to them and their children. "I have heard them say again and again: 'We must win now, regardless of the cost and the time it takes. The sacrifices we have suffered are too great for us to hesitate at anything short of victory.'"
When the German cavalry were flung back from the rear of Vilna, the retreating Russians once more breathed freely. The end of the summer campaign had come, and still the Germans had delivered no smashing blow. During the month of October von Hindenburg strove fiercely to carry the line of the Dvina, in order to secure Dvinsk and Riga as winter quarters. The Russian right lay on the sea, and behind the river stretched a wilderness of marsh and lake almost impassable for troops and big guns. Riga and the line of the river south of it were defended by great stretches of bogland, and the patches of dry ground were cut up by many sluggish streams flowing in reedy channels. General Ruzsky, who was holding Dvinsk, had learned the lesson of Verdun and pushed out his defences far from the city. In the course of a big attack on 26th September the Germans came within eight miles of the fortress, but they could approach no nearer. An attempt to reach Riga by the coast road was foiled by the guns of the Russian fleet.